They probably should cost more, but they can't. If not enough people are willing to pay $100 for a game, then you cant sell it at that price or you don't have a business. That is where the problem lies. That's why EA is getting out of the liner story gaming business and focusing only on games they can monetize post launch. People can be convinced to pay $100-250 for a game if they get DLC and some art books and statues. Its interesting how that works... but most of the time those types of games need to be established series or have insane hype.
I could see myself paying $75 for a base game so long as its not bullshit. That's me though. The higher you go in price, mistakes and bombs are going to hurt more, and cost consumer confidence faster. No one is willing to take that chance yet. The same goes for consoles. They're always going to be limited until people are willing to pay $500. We live in a world where people get triggered over every small thing they perceive as getting taken advantage of over. And that sentiment becomes infectious on Reddit. Sometimes its jusitifed, but when its not, the results are terrible. (I watched my favorite game's expac get ruined over shit like this).
The thing I don't want to see is "early access" become the norm. I think that's a bunch of bullshit.

I feel like I'm going the be the only one playing devil's advocate but I agree with the EC video, games shouldn't cost $60 anymore (and I wouldn't say they're playing Spin Doctor or that they're to calm, they're taking a rational approach to a subject that get gamers way to fucking angry every time it comes up (and no I don't agree with the inflation argument, I just generally think games should cost more based on what the employees in this industry make and what they have to go through to get said game out (they really need to be paid more but that's another subject for another time))). While I don't look forward to that time when games cost more than this it's a sad fact. Honestly I'm still surprised that they're still $60, I've been expecting a price hike for years. It's inevitable, it will happen once DLC/loot boxes stop paying the bills (and with the recent Battlefront 2 debacle it'll happen sooner than later). While Jim brings up a lot of great points sadly he seems to have no grasp about how things work in the industry.
Sadly I'm not going any further with this argument. Honestly I now enough about the industry to agree with the video (I have a degree in this, I've had to take classes that explain the overhead costs a studio has and how much money they actually get compared to the publisher. I literally had to make a business plan for a final in my Game Management class with a budget, you'd be fucking surprised how much a AAA game actually takes to make (and how much having a person with a degree in Business Management would help most developers out)) and I'll leave it at that.
Please note I'm not defending the industry for what it does I just agree that games should cost more, it's inevitable with everything else we buy so why shouldn't it hold true here.

As much as I liked Extra Credits, Extra Credits has a way of defending or promoting AAA Games in a way that I'm uncertain if they're playing Spin Doctor or are just too calm.
I think my main problem with this Extra Credits video is they talk about how inflation hurts the game industry but fail to note that inflation has hurt gamers who live on minimum wage.

GW2 HAD horizontal progression. When Heart of Thorns came out it was pretty good IMO. You had to do certain tasks to gain mastery points, and invest those into new abilities. Each category of said ability required more points every tier you leveled it up. It was a pain in some places but overall it was doable solo. GW2's player base on a whole is super casual, HoT required more than just using auto attack to survive encounters. It actually made you use the skill sets they put into the game. It wasn't perfect, but it was refreshing to me. People cried and bitched that they couldn't get everything day one. So when Path of Fire came out, the horizontal progression was a joke, it all revolved around the new mount system, and you basically just had vertical progression for each mount type. On top of that, if you invested the time in HoT, you had enough Hero Points to get your new specializations unlocked day one, because everyone cried about the HP requirement back then, so they lowered it refunding the points for those that did it legit. Within a week I had everything maxed out and my interest in the game died off for the first time in 3 years. It took me a year to get enough mastery points on HoT.
There is absolutely no excuse not to have LFG, both consoles have a virtual keyboard built in to type out a description. Raids don't necessarily need the best rewards, they need unique rewards that aren't utter trash and are indeed among the best gear in the game. They should also have extra stats bonuses for the raid and future raids. This is one request I see a lot of on the Destiny Reddit. The problem I had with Destiny 1's first year was the only way to get any decent gear at all was the raid, even the standard legendary gear that dropped in the raid was better. After seeing what they did by Y3, and some of the awesome strikes they made, that had strike specific loot it baffles me why all this was left out of D2. I guess they thought they could get away with slowly readding it as "new" content and got called out on their BS. I was against random rolls at first because I thought getting legendary weapons were going to be as much as a grueling grind as it was in D1, but thats not the case so rolls would actually have been good for D2. Like Strider pointed out, they went from one extreme to the other instead of just dialing it down a little bit.
Anthem needs to follow The Division's lead on loot... and by that I don't just mean how it drops, but adding loot for free in patch updates. When I came back to the game there was a shit ton of new exotic weapons, and they had added 3-4 more in 1.8. Loot is why people play these games, and when you have everything, or at least everything worth having, thats when it gets stale. Borderlands is a semi-linear game, but I remember spending hours repeating bosses just to sort through the explosion of loot and pick up new guns.

Being a semi-MMO raids are probably going to exist in Anthem but I think BioWare knows how to handle it the right way as opposed to Bungie. They've had 4 years of watching Destiny fail and seeing just how much of a dud Destiny 2 was (especially raid wise). I have a feeling they'll do something similar but restrict just how much it means to the overall progression of your character. What that actually means is a mystery now but BioWare does have one MMO under their belt (TOR) and while it started out very badly they've had years to reflect and adapt to the market through it. Yes I know BioWare Austin is in charge of TOR but the development team has mostly shifted to other projects and you can no doubt most of them shifted to this (I believe the TOR team is only 5-6 members right now and they might not be doing it for much longer if the news that came along with this announcement is to be believed). I'll tell you this much if there is no LFG system in Anthem it will not be received well. Gamers asked for it for 3 years with Destiny and never got it and when D2 had a glimmer of having such a system we can Guided Games which is an atrocity. It's not that hard to program a system into a game to match people together to play, fuck Crucible does it so I can't understand why D1 or D2 never had it (outside of the devs developing it that way). Fuck WoW and FFXIV even have the ability to allow people on different servers to form raid groups and do content so I can't see why games similar to it can't get it done.
Sadly no MMO or semi-MMO has horizontal scaling, it's always vertical (GW2 might be the exception, I lost interest fast in the game and haven't really progressed past where I last was). Without something to work towards nobody will play the game. It's a problem every MMO type game runs into and while it sucks it's just something to get used to. My mentality towards this will always be the same having been a hardcore raider in WoW for a year (before I got burned out), it's part of the package. I don't raid in FFXIV, no real interest as it has other ways to get gear equivalent to raid gear. Is it grindy as fuck? Yes (it takes roughly 6-9 weeks to grind the currency needed to buy the gear, which with the way FFXIV patches its roughly 3 months through a content patch cycle but that gear lasts for 6 months by upgrading it (which is usually when the new raid tier and gear comes out)) but it's something to work towards. Horizontal progression/scaling would stagnate a game for me and, much like you Sledge, I'm the definition of a casual player. I spent the last 5 months getting my character to item level 339 (current max is 340 with raid gear and weapons) and on Tuesday I need to start all over again grind to the next current ilvl cap (it sucks but hey I get new story content and something to work toward again, the last month has been boring with nothing to really do besides gear my Samurai). Sadly not every MMO has a similar line of progression and semi-MMOs probably never will. Catering to much too one side always pisses the other side off and no one is really happy. We've seen it with Destiny 1, we're currently seeing it with Destiny 2, The Division suffered from it in the beginning, and Blizzard learned the hard way with WoW years ago (the game is finally turning into something I could see myself getting back into but I can't afford another MMO subscription). No company has found the perfect balance yet.
The other problem with raid content is that it will always be a time sink. When you first get into a raid it'll take more then 30 minutes to beat due to learning mechanics and gear. Once mechanics are learned and party gear gets better this becomes faster but you have to remember raids are designed to be hard, making them too fast and easy will just make the content boring. The best gear is always locked behind this content because it's your reward for successfully beating the content. Yea, it sucks for people like you and me but that's just how games like this work. I feel D2 dropped the ball there by making gear just cosmetic with little to no meaning for stats (yea they are there but honestly I don't give two shits as its effect on gameplay are minor at best (except for recovery)). I feel the whole raid is cheapened by that and it's no wonder why so many people were disappointed with the rewards considering a Crucible rewarded hand cannon is better then 90% of the weapons you get from the raid (which is supposed to be the hardest content with the best rewards).
Meh, my opinions on Anthem still stand no matter how much info comes out (until I see new gameplay footage highlighting the major features of this game I will reserve my judgement but I'm not allowing another D1 disappointment by pre-ordering). I'm done getting hyped for these big, blockbuster games which always result in disappointment and I'm done pre-ordering unless I know exactly what I'm getting. The only game I'm hyped for is Ace Combat 7 (which I will pre-order) because I know exactly what I'm getting, a mechanically sound air combat simulator that will be fun regardless if the story sucks or not (as long as they don't bring mechanics from Assault Horizon over).

Holy cow there seems to be a subscription crate for everything now. AC Filters, Clothes, Bras, Candy, etc. I actually just signed up for Umai Crate. It seems to be the most unique and best value. Its just a box full of different Japanese instant ramens. I'll report if its any better than the cheap shitty ramen you can get at the grocery store. For $25 a month, the box seems to be full of 7-9 bags/boxes/cups of various types. If I'm not impressed with the first box, I'll cancel it and feel like it was worth trying something interesting. I watched a few youtube unboxings and taste tests and it seems to be pretty well received, even in the comments on their facebook posts. I recently had authentic ramen at a local hole in the wall and it was amazing. I always thought ramen was just that shitty Nissin stuff. Some of the videos I watched, its def a little more complex than just pouring hot water into noodles and a tiny spice packet. Some of them have multiple packets to enter in before and after water is added. And apparently there are suggested fresh add ons you can buy separately at the grocery store. Things you obviously can't dehydrate like hard boiled eggs.

It will hopefully be better than General Zod's plot from Man Of Steel.
Gender swapped Mario? Which is basically Super Princess Peach. I'm not trying to defend what they did. If anything they already had a good plot. Then someone demanded the ability to ship characters for the sake of shipping characters.

How disappointing can reality get when "Does Not Include Micro-Transactions" isn't a big enough selling point?
Sure I hope they succeed, but I'm not giving them my money for something I still find generic.

As far as I know Carnage has always been the offspring of Venom.
I thought Life starring Ryan Reynolds ruined a Vin Diesel movie I was day dreaming about where Dominic Toretto lives his Life one spin at a time. On the other hand I wanted to believe San Andreas starring The Rock was an alternate timeline where Lex Luthor succeeded in making beachfront property.

If I remember correctly Spider-Man's Black Suit from Secret Wars. (And might've been based on a female character with a black spider suit, but I can't confirm that to be true.) Both Spider-Man: The Animated Series & Spider-Man 3 never really wanted to delve into the whole Venom origins story so it shouldn't be a surprise that Spider-Man can be cut from that story too.
As far as Venom's powers go it can be simply based off of Venom's obsession with Spider-Man. Like how Carnage is obsessed with the T-1000 stabbing weapons because Carnage is attached to a murderer.
Now let me tell you how Ant-Man's origin makes zero sense without Atom from DC.
....
That was just sarcasm about Ant-Man. You don't need DC's Atom in order to tell Ant-Man's story.

I watched every episode of this, and although it had it's low points at the start. I'm glad I stuck with it. I think they spent too much time introducing the characters. I can't remember exactly when the show took off, but it was probably around ep 4 or 5 when each episode had me waiting in anticipation for what was going to happen next. It's way more political drama than battle heavy, but the plot twists were really good even if I called a few before they happened.

I'm just going to point out that Battlefront 2 was a bad example, it's price drop was brought on entirely by the bad press it was getting for it's mishandling of loot boxes and EA's shady business practices. Steam always drops prices but those price drops are only for certain events (like the Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring sales. Generally most games stick to full price unless Valve decides to drop it (its generally not a publisher call when a business runs a sale)). Humble Bundle is a special case, almost all money for those sales goes towards charity if chosen to. Most publishers make very little to no money off of it (I know I place most of the money to charity when I buy a bundle, with very little going to the publishers and Humble Bundle itself) and this is by choice to try and improve their reputation to gamers.
Waiting isn't a bad thing, it's what most of our generation does now when it comes to buying games. As I said above I've been doing it since the $60 hike back in 2005 and I buy a lot less games now. If you don't want to pay full price that's your choice as a consumer but honestly a raise in prices is not uncalled for. There are plenty of gamers out there that will pay $75+ for a game and they'll do it day 1, a price hike would not hurt the industry as much as everyone thinks it will (it'll be a blow that's for sure but it won't kill it). With the shift to multiplayer only games now you won't see many games that will retain their value longer then you deem it to. Single player games are becoming non-existent now unless you're in the market for indie games (which are always reasonably priced) because, like DX pointed out, companies can't currently make their money back on a game thats's one and done with no DLC or map packs to keep money rolling in. Sadly the value of a game is what you deem it to be and it always will.

I honestly think $75 is a good price, it's a $15 hike that honestly anyone in today's work climate can afford (and I say this barely making ends meat each month). However, it's a price hike not everyone will agree with (I mean look at the fallout that happened when games initially went to $60, it was mind blowing how many people lost their shit over it (I was initially one of them but in the end it wasn't that bad, it just meant I bought less games over the year and made more attempts to research the game before I purchased it)). I mean I'm that guy that's willing to drop $200 or more on a game (fuck I spent $230 on the Stormblood expansion for FFXIV and I even dropped the $100+ to get the Horizon: Zero Dawn Collector's edition, a brand new IP that I actually believed in and was honestly blown away but how great of a game it is (and I still need to beat it)) that I feel will do well but honestly I'm one of the few.
Sadly a game price hike needs to be regulated and done without the consent of publishers but it will never happen because publishers want more money (as seen with EA's Battlefront bullshit) and this is why I sadly agree with your point that they won't rise because we all know what EA will price a game at (I could honestly see a new Battlefield being priced at $100+ without the Premium membership if they had their way). It's sad though because members of the actual development community are paid like shit if you're not an established name or studio (fuck most studios are lucky to get 5% royalty deal on sales (and this was back in 2010 when I was still in school, I'm sure shit isn't any better now) after their initial milestone payments). With the current infrastructure I wouldn't be surprised if the gaming industry ends up like our current movie and music industries (barely hanging on due to greed and archaic practices).
Early access needs to go but it won't. It's the only way indie and non-AAA games are being funded these days outside of Kickstarter. It's a shit practice but considering how well PUBG did with EA and how good Fortnite is doing in EA I don't see it going anywhere and wouldn't be surprised if more little known developers go down this path in the future (and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if AAA titles started doing this as well). I know I harp about the old days but I really miss them. I hate being an old jaded gamer and consumer, it sucks that my favorite hobby/past time went from being passion projects to being nothing more then publishers fighting for more money and releasing shit. This is pretty much the reason why I stick solely to FFXIV these days, its a great game and I'm willing to pay $86 or so for 6 months of game time (please note that's with extra, optional account shit. It normally costs $78) plus extra for Mogstation shit (like mounts, outfits, minions (pets), etc). Purchasing games now-a-days is like going to a casino, you never know when you're going to hit the jackpot and end up losing more than you win.

Counter point: Movie going hit a 22 year low in 2017. It has less to do with the pricing and more with the product though. Reboots, remakes, sequels.
Games can't go up because of the frequency they need to come out now. Annual titles like COD have bred short attention spans. It's not like a car or a mattress that had a 5-10 year turn around. Plus you gotta pay for the console, and a yearly subscription to play most of the games. There is too much money going everywhere else. If they raised the prices, DLC and lootboxes wouldnt go away at this point so they dug their own grave.

I don't agree with the inflation argument. Sure inflation has been happening but wages have not been increasing at the same rate, at least for me it sure hasn't. There's alot of products that haven't gone up in price in over a decade. Milk, bread and eggs still cost the same as in 2006. Yes it's not a fair comparison of eggs to video game development but some things we are used to being a specific price.
On the other hand the price of a movie ticket has almost doubled since 2006, but ppl will still go to the movies. Once a movie ticket starts hitting the $20 mark I bet ppl will go to a hell of a lot less movies especially since everyone has to watch 30 minutes of trailers and commercials before the movie even starts as it is. But movies have something to offer a video game doesn't when it comes to piracy. If someone buys a movie ticket they buy an experience that won't happen again after a certain point in time. Being able to watch that movie in a theater with amazing sound and a giant screen. But a video game doesn't offer an experience like that to counter piracy. If someone pirates a game they have the same experience as the person that bought the game on release. The fact that going to a movie is something you can't recreate at home is why ppl pay the price of a ticket with current inflation rates. But if video games kept raising their prices then piracy would most like rise right along with it negating any extra profits they might have gotten from those higher prices. Mobile gaming has proved that the real cash cow is to get as many ppl playing the game as possible and then sell the microtransactions.

This was on HBO GO so I gave it a shot. Fimmel was just Ragnar with more hair. He uses the same accent or at least lets it slip often. The CGI doesn't hold up well on the small screen, it looks like a Triple A game. The RTS style camera angles for some of the battle scenes was a subtle tribute. I'm not a lore nut, so I can't comment on how accurate or inaccurate the story held up to the original game. Overall it was enjoyable, but not enjoyable enough to have paid to see at the theater IMO.

Eh, thats what happens when every few years you lose the #2 burger chain spot to a company with a lot fewer stores, but better food and better customer service (Wendy's)... you gotta get behind every trending political statement to try to lure people that agree with it to try your subpar microwaved hamburger. There are few places of business I despise more consistently than BK. In the 17 years I've earned my own income to eat where I've wanted too, I've known BK to have the same terrible service and food in every state I've lived in, and every city I've worked in. I swear if I ever walked into a place and they punched my burger (their bully campaign), I would have walked out and flipped off the camera guy. Either all of these ad campaigns are staged even though it says actual guests, or people had to wait even longer than the normal long time it takes to have your order taken. You're not going to teach me anything, you're just going to lose my business. I came to eat not be preached too. Post a statement on the internet, or in the paper about it.

This season has been amazing. Its actually one of the best. I didn't think they'd beable to stay so strong without Ragnar, but they managed to do it. Ivar is a really strong character. Everyone despises him, and they all say he is tearing Rangar's legacy apart, but they don't know Rangar encouraged him to be like this.
Its looking bad for Lagertha. Shes lost Astrid now, and I don't trust Heahmund. I'm starting to think his capture was a calculated risk. The preview for the second half of the season makes it seem that she's going to die, but it may be for shock value because we don't really see her. I can see Rollo still holding that grudge that she never loved him instead of Ragnar. With the mid-season finale roster purge, it looks like there will still be more culling of the cast.
I was sad to see Halfdan die, especially in such a lame way. I really liked his character especially after his journey with Bjorn to the Mediterranean. Astrid's death was sad too. They really screwed her character over. She knew that the kid was probably from when she got gang raped. She rather would have died by Lagertha's blade than Harald's wrath.
And going back to Heahmund, I really like his character. He brings a lot to this season. He's clearly a corrupt christian that indulges in sin. Only using his religious position to his advantage.
Aethelwulf dying like Macaulay Culkin in My Girl was so lame too. C'mon. Then we get a gratuitous shot of Judith's Mic Foley ear for no reason. They could have not spent the money on the CGI and kept her hair over it like they have. Clearly Athelred despises Alfred for being king at his mothers request. It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out because at this point History has pretty much gone from slight deviations from History, to completely throwing it off track.
Floki's camp is a disaster too. I don't get his character anymore. After he killed Aethelstan he's been incredibly inconsistent. He's always been ultra loyal to the gods, but then gets miffed by the Muslims, and then after he loses everything and almost dies from an hand cut infection, he's all about the gods again and tries to make a camp where this dude is trying to be an ass, and they swap son deaths with the other guy after Floki offers him the position of Lawgiver under the condition of no revenge killings. Then he offer's himself as a sacrifice. I don't think he'll die, but at this point I don't really care about his character anymore. He was one of my favorites, but this whole side story doesn't really interest me. I wish he would have just had that whole family killed and be done with them.
Ivar, Bjorn, Lagertha, and Heahmund are my favorite characters still around. Ubbe seems important, but I feel they've established Ivar as the dominant brother. Now that Bjorn's love interest is dead, and Ubbe has seduced Torvi. I expect some awkwardness between the two... but also a common interest since Ubbe loves Torvi, he must protect Bjorn's children from crazy ass Margrethe. I hope Torvi puts a hatchet through her head.

Obviously the game won't be perfect. I fully expect cosmetic microtransations, the potential for Javelin skins are too good to pass up. I could see skins, booster effects, lighting packages, weapon camo, etc.
They're going to have to have a solid loot pool implemented with good variety, and specific ways to get some. They're also going to need to have way better communication with the playerbase than Bungie has done. Right now D2's community is just a wave of rage and Bungie is just adding more to the landslide dropping into the ocean. Its amazing how they can't implement mass deletion of shaders until later this year (even though you can do this with important items), but can delay Faction Rally for a month just to nerf token acquisitions. Basically don't make the classic mistake of prioritizing reward nerfs over serious issues with the game. Especially if the rewards are lackluster in the first place.
From that last video it seems Bioware has been paying attention to Destiny 2 and The Division and taking notes on what and what not do. They have a lot riding on this game. People can give Andromeda a pass since it was a B team studio, but if this gets fucked up, their rep is going to take some irreversible damage. At a time where there aren't many developers left that are still viewed highly by gamers, we definitely don't need that to happen.

While I'm quite optimistic about the game after those videos I'm not going to get hyped considering BioWare's track record as of late (I mean come on, Andromeda did not deserve what happened to it). As more gameplay footage comes out I'll start making my judgement but I'm not falling for the hype like I did with Destiny and The Division (yes I know The Division is a much better game now but still, we both know how it was when it first came out).
If everything that was covered in those videos is true, however, this will be the game I've been waiting for since Destiny was originally announced and this might just be what kills my addiction to FFXIV. That's a big if though.